The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was one of the leading
non-violent organizations that spearheaded the 1960s civil rights movement.
Although it had been in existence in Chicago for two decades, it was not until
the early 1960s that the organization became highly visible and reached its
peak, establishing local chapters across the country. Seattle CORE became one
of the organization’s most ambitious and successful chapters. During the
1960s, Seattle CORE helped support the organization’s national campaigns
and undertook many projects to fight local discrimination in employment,
housing, and education.

In 1942 a group of Chicago pacifists founded the Congress of Racial
Equality. However, the group did not receive much attention until 1960 when
four African American students in North Carolina violated segregation practices
by sitting at a Woolworth’s lunch counter. Realizing that the
demonstrators had used the non-violent methods that CORE advocated, the
organization rushed to assist them after their arrest. CORE was not responsible
for this event, but the protest brought widespread publicity and showed the
effectiveness that non-violent direct action could have.

The following year was even more pivotal for the organization when it
organized the Freedom Rides. Despite the publicity that CORE gained from the
Woolworth sit-in, the following year proved to be more momentous and led people
in cities such as Seattle to open local chapters. Following a Supreme Court
decision prohibiting segregation in interstate travel, including on buses and
in terminal accommodations, CORE organized groups of African Americans to ride
buses throughout the South and violate customary segregation wherever they
went.

After its founding in 1961, most of Seattle CORE’s initial work
was to support CORE’s national efforts, especially the campaigns in the
South. One example was in 1961 when Seattle CORE teamed up with the local
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to support
the Haywood County Civic and Welfare League. This action was to raise money for
black sharecroppers and tenant farmers near Brownsville, Tennessee, who had
been evicted for registering to vote.

Soon, however, the chapter began to focus on local discrimination. The
chapter’s first target was employment discrimination, and in October
1961 it began its campaign against the Bon Marché department store. By 1962
protests spread to J.C. Penney, Nordstrom, Frederick & Nelson, A&P,
Tradewell, and Washington Natural Gas. Protest methods included a
“selective buying” campaign, picketing, and other demonstrations.
One of the largest protests came in 1963 when Seattle CORE and the local NAACP
led 1,000 marchers to the Bon Marché. At department stores the chapter also led
“shoe-ins.” During these events CORE flooded the stores with
protesters who tried on numerous pairs of shoes without buying any of them.
Seattle CORE also picketed A&P grocery stores for fifteen weeks in 1963
until reaching an agreement with management. However, by March 1964 the chapter
said that the company had not lived up to its agreement and began protesting
again. For the first time, Seattle CORE used the “shop-in,” in
which protesters filled their carts with non-perishable goods and rang them up
at the cash register, then left without buying the items.

By 1964 the chapter’s actions had convinced management to agree
to start hiring more African Americans at Bon Marché, Safeway, J.C. Penney,
A&P, Wonder Bread, Frederick & Nelson, Nordstrom, and other stores. By
the end of 1964, Seattle CORE claimed that its actions had resulted in the
hiring of more than 250 white-collar employees. In terms of the number of jobs
opened to African Americans, Seattle CORE was one of the most successful
chapters in the nation.

Despite initial jubilation, many Seattle CORE members began to see
their gains as minor compared to the employment discrimination that still
existed. Thus the chapter began Operation DEEDS (Drive for Equal Employment in
Downtown Stores), one of the most ambitious programs ever undertaken by a CORE
chapter. DEEDS was a boycott of the entire downtown shopping area in October
1964, with a demand for 1,200 jobs for African Americans. Members quickly
became frustrated when they were unable to obtain their ambitious goal, even
though the results of this project compared favorably with previous
campaigns.

Housing discrimination was another target of the chapter. Late in
1963, Seattle CORE conducted “Operation Windowshop” which
encouraged blacks to look for housing outside the Central District. On
designated weekends, CORE encouraged African Americans to visit realtors and
attend open houses to try to move into white neighborhoods. However, many
homeowners and members of the real estate industry were adamantly opposed to
housing integration. As a result, many “for sale” signs came down
and many realtors closed their businesses on Operation Windowshop weekends.
Seattle CORE then lobbied the city council to pass an open-housing ordinance.
When that effort failed, it tried to pass an open-housing referendum in 1964,
which the local realtors’ association fought vigorously. Seattle voters
soundly rejected the measure in eleven of twelve voting districts.

Following the defeat of the open-housing ordinance, Seattle CORE
turned to direct action protests to fight housing segregation. In March 1964,
it began sit-ins at the Picture Floor Plans Company, one of the local real
estate firms accused of discouraging African Americans from buying homes in
white neighborhoods. This protest signaled a change in the actions of the
chapter’s membership in a way that seemed out-of-line with CORE’s
rules of conduct. For the first time, many CORE protesters chanted and sang,
shouted insults, and pushed and shoved when a locked door was opened to admit a
customer. When a salesperson grew hostile and struck a demonstrator, the
chapter suspended the protests. The next day a court injunction halted all
picketing against realtors.

The actions of protesters at the Picture Floor Plans Company
demonstrated the internal divisions that were taking shape within Seattle CORE
as well as the national organization itself. Like other local chapters, Seattle
CORE maintained a relatively small membership, which was partly by design.
Seattle CORE had a “closed membership” policy which meant that
people could only receive active memberships after serving a probationary
period, participating in action projects, receiving approval from two-thirds of
the chapter, and committing themselves to following the CORE rules of conduct.
As a result of such stringent requirements, the membership of Seattle CORE
usually remained below fifty. One of the reasons that CORE remained so
effective was that its sympathizers, who contributed money and participated in
demonstrations, outnumbered active members of the chapter. However, with each
successive victory more people wanted to join the ranks of the organization and
the chapter grew in size through 1964. Some members complained about this
growth, arguing that the organization was getting too large and that it was
becoming too easy for people to join. The rise of Black Power ideology by 1965
influenced many younger members of the chapter, who believed more fervently in
retaliation than in non-violent resistance, and who were less willing to accept
white integration in the organization.

Dissidents within CORE, who more readily accepted Black Power, formed
themselves into the Ad Hoc Committee and even rented their own office. They
were the ones who had inaugurated the confrontations at the Picture Floor Plans
Company and had allegedly escalated confrontation at the A&P shop-in.
Members of the Ad Hoc Committee accused the chapter leaders of being
“too respectable” and not militant enough. When the chapter
called off the Picture Floor Plans Company protests, dissident members tried to
defeat the leadership in the next election. After failing, members of the
committee withdrew from CORE and planned to function as a ghetto-oriented
institution, but soon disintegrated. However, their departure did not end the
chapter’s internal problems, as many members began leaving the
organization. By 1965 Seattle CORE had a membership of only 65, compared to
over 200 the year before.

Seattle CORE faced the same problems that were confronting the
national organization and chapters across the country. While African Americans
held most of the top leadership positions, CORE had always been a multiracial
organization. In Seattle and in many other cities with a relatively small black
population, it was not uncommon for the membership to include more whites than
blacks. Although this issue was not the major one that split Seattle CORE in
the mid 1960s, it did become a factor after the 1967 national CORE convention
which deleted the word “multiracial” from its constitution.
Seattle chairperson John Cornethan publicly criticized this action and declared
that it was an effort to drive out white supporters. Dissidents Frances White
and Les McIntosh seized on this opportunity to oust Cornethan from his post and
then made Seattle CORE the city’s first civil rights group to embrace
Black Power. After this event, most whites disappeared from the organization,
which continued its decline until its end in 1970.

Despite internal rifts, Seattle CORE managed to continue
anti-discrimination campaigns until the late 1960s. In the summer of 1965, it
started running “Freedom Patrols” to follow police officers and
monitor their behavior. In the spring of 1966 it led a two-day boycott of
Seattle public schools to protest de facto segregation of schoolchildren. In
the same year it also protested discrimination by labor unions, particularly
the Building Trades Union which represented construction workers.

Most of the materials relate to Seattle CORE's activities both in
local and national civil rights campaigns. The records include correspondence,
minutes, case files, financial records, committee records, convention and
workshop materials, and subject files concerning civil rights projects in
several southern states as well as housing, education, and employment in
Seattle. Included is material relating to the American Civil Liberties Union,
the Washington State Board Against Discrimination, James Baldwin, George
Washington Bush, and James Farmer.

Related Materials

The State Historical Society of Wisconsin holds the records from the
CORE national office, the Western Regional Office, the Southern Regional
Office, and the archives of the Scholarship, Education and Defense Fund for
Racial Equality. All but the papers of the national office are available on
microfilm, and the University of Washington Libraries’ Microforms and
Newspapers division has a copy of the Western Regional Office records as well
as a guide to the society’s entire CORE collection. The Martin Luther
King, Jr. Center in Atlanta, the Bancroft Library at the University of
California at Berkeley, and the University of Michigan also hold CORE records.

The Special Collections division in the University of Washington
Libraries holds three Seattle CORE publications, including two studies by
Charles Valentine regarding segregation in public schools and Operation
DEEDS.

Scope and Content: Most of the materials relate to Seattle CORE’s activities,
both in local and national civil rights campaigns. The records include
correspondence, minutes, financial records, committee records, convention and
workshop materials, and subject files regarding the national and local civil
rights movement. Subject files include material on housing, education,
employment (including case files), and civil rights projects in various
Southern states. The collection also includes civil rights literature from
Seattle CORE, national CORE, and other sources.

The Ad Hoc Committee folder in box 3 contains information from the
chapter’s established leadership about the dissident Ad Hoc Committee.
This container also contains a detailed description of the investigation of
discrimination at the Picture Floor Plans Company and subsequent protests
against the firm, as well as complaints about committee members who allegedly
did not adhere to CORE rules during the demonstrations.

In box 3, the Negotiating Committee folder provides the African
American employment statistics for each of the stores that Seattle CORE accused
of discrimination. Case files in boxes 7 and 8 contain Seattle CORE materials
related to their investigations, negotiations with, and protests against
specific companies.

Restrictions on Access: Open to all users.

Restrictions on Use: Creator's literary rights not specifically transferred to the
University of Washington Libraries, but assume that users may copy and quote
for publication.

Scope and Content: Clippings, newsletters, call for volunteers, handwritten notes,
fact sheets, meeting minutes, and more, primarily relating to school
integration and the racial imbalance in Seattle Public Schools in the 1960s,
emphasis on the 1966 school boycott and Freedom Schools.

Restrictions on Access: Open to all users.

Restrictions on Use: Creator's literary rights transferred to the University of
Washington Libraries.